Hi All,
Just thought I’d share my experiences in a recent shop/home demo of a few subwoofers.
First off, I’d like to say thank you to Mahmood at Audio T in Enfield for his endless patience while I had 2 store demo’s and 3 home demos over two weeks. Fully recommend people take a visit.
The shop demo used an Arcam receiver and PMC twenty 5 24 series floorstanders (very nice J ), while the home demo used a Yamaha a3060 and B&W CM8, CMC, CM1 package. The subwoofers demoed were the B&W DB4, Rel t9i, Rel s3 SHO and Rel s5 SHO. With the ones I took home (s3 and t9i) I then compared to my exising Monitor Audio RSW12, which itself is not a bad sub. My previous experience with subs was a BK Ref 100 and a (much) older Mission sub and my current Monitor Audio.
First up was the Rel T9i. This little sub was very surprising, it dug very deep for a box of it’s size and could easily fill both the store demo room and my living room with ear bursting sound. This one was initially my favourite of the bunch as it clearly added a lot to the sound, but also had a good ‘bounce’ when playing music. This one came home with me for a demo in my living room.
The second was the B&W DB4. I have to admit to going into this demo with a Bias as I was expecting this new sub from B&W to be the best, but to be honest I was quite disappointed. It had good speed in the higher bass notes, but it just didn’t fel like it added any extension to the PMC floorstanders. This was quite quickly eliminated from the shortlist.
Next was the Rel S5 SHO. This one was a beast, which you could feel in your chest when watching films.
Finally was the Rel S3 SHO, this one was my hands down favourite and was also taken home to demo. It has an incredible ability to disappear into the main speakers, and made all the other subs bar the s5 sound slightly slow in comparision. While sounding invisible, there is no denying it is there as this thing digs deep and fast, but most importantly for me it can also be very delicate and subtle too. This sub happily improved both the PMC’s and my CM8’s. In some ways the t9i had some advantages over the s3 in terms of it’s “hey look at me”, but after two home demo’s of the t9i I found myself craving the more sophisticated approach to bass that the S3 provided. Interestingly, the thing I loved most about this sub was not just the seismic bass, but what it did to vocals. I wasn’t by any means expecting an improvement in this area, but it was certainly there. When watching films or listening to music I was just found myself pulled into the vocals more (even though the sound didn’t seem to be coming from the sub), but then I’d turn the sub off and the vocals lost body and definition. This was also evident in film orchestra music such as the opening to The Last Jedi. The Star Wars theme song came across a rich and stirring, just as it should do and a vast improvement on even my monitor audio J
So that was the end of the demo and I’m happy to say I have an S3 on order right now
Just thought I’d share my experiences in a recent shop/home demo of a few subwoofers.
First off, I’d like to say thank you to Mahmood at Audio T in Enfield for his endless patience while I had 2 store demo’s and 3 home demos over two weeks. Fully recommend people take a visit.
The shop demo used an Arcam receiver and PMC twenty 5 24 series floorstanders (very nice J ), while the home demo used a Yamaha a3060 and B&W CM8, CMC, CM1 package. The subwoofers demoed were the B&W DB4, Rel t9i, Rel s3 SHO and Rel s5 SHO. With the ones I took home (s3 and t9i) I then compared to my exising Monitor Audio RSW12, which itself is not a bad sub. My previous experience with subs was a BK Ref 100 and a (much) older Mission sub and my current Monitor Audio.
First up was the Rel T9i. This little sub was very surprising, it dug very deep for a box of it’s size and could easily fill both the store demo room and my living room with ear bursting sound. This one was initially my favourite of the bunch as it clearly added a lot to the sound, but also had a good ‘bounce’ when playing music. This one came home with me for a demo in my living room.
The second was the B&W DB4. I have to admit to going into this demo with a Bias as I was expecting this new sub from B&W to be the best, but to be honest I was quite disappointed. It had good speed in the higher bass notes, but it just didn’t fel like it added any extension to the PMC floorstanders. This was quite quickly eliminated from the shortlist.
Next was the Rel S5 SHO. This one was a beast, which you could feel in your chest when watching films.
Finally was the Rel S3 SHO, this one was my hands down favourite and was also taken home to demo. It has an incredible ability to disappear into the main speakers, and made all the other subs bar the s5 sound slightly slow in comparision. While sounding invisible, there is no denying it is there as this thing digs deep and fast, but most importantly for me it can also be very delicate and subtle too. This sub happily improved both the PMC’s and my CM8’s. In some ways the t9i had some advantages over the s3 in terms of it’s “hey look at me”, but after two home demo’s of the t9i I found myself craving the more sophisticated approach to bass that the S3 provided. Interestingly, the thing I loved most about this sub was not just the seismic bass, but what it did to vocals. I wasn’t by any means expecting an improvement in this area, but it was certainly there. When watching films or listening to music I was just found myself pulled into the vocals more (even though the sound didn’t seem to be coming from the sub), but then I’d turn the sub off and the vocals lost body and definition. This was also evident in film orchestra music such as the opening to The Last Jedi. The Star Wars theme song came across a rich and stirring, just as it should do and a vast improvement on even my monitor audio J
So that was the end of the demo and I’m happy to say I have an S3 on order right now
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